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A Tribute To Courage To Come Back Award Recipient Trisha Baptie

Courage To Come Back Award, downtown eastside, orato.com, Pauline VanKoll, Pickton, prostitution, serial killer trial, Trisha Baptie, Union Gospel Mission

It was an unlikely connection that changed lives.

Suddenly I saw her and our eyes met. Despite the fact that we were the cast offs in this culture of cast offs, she was off of her seat in an instant, forsaking her drink, and ran the whole length of the bar to embrace me...

By Citizen Correspondent Amanda Goletto

Date Posted: 04/15/08

Reader Rating:

My name is Amanda Goletto and I am huge fan of Trisha Baptie, who was one of Orato.com's Robert Pickton serial killer trial citizen correspondents last year. The remains of at least 26 women, most survival-sex prostitutes with drug addictions, were found on Pickton's pig farm. In the first trial, Pickton was found guilty on six counts of second degree murder, but he is implicated in the deaths of as many as 50 of the more than 60 women who disappeared from Vancouver, Canada.

Trisha counted some of Pickton's victims among her friends. Now, she wins the Courage To Come Back Award for her bravery in leaving her life on the streets, for giving the murdered women of Vancouver, Canada's Downtown Eastside a voice through her trial coverage, and for her ongoing activism. Each year in British Columbia six people are honored for their courage to overcome and recover from illness, injury or adversity. I am so proud of Trish for overcoming and to be able to call her my friend.

It all began in 2000. Through a street outreach team associated with Union Gospel Mission in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver I met Trish Baptie when she was a prostitute.

After 15 years of Trish working on the streets, she and I connected over a simple cup of hot chocolate and a discussion of her tattoos and piercings. Whether we were hanging out at the Ivanhoe Pub or playing with her kids, admiration and love came easily.

We had arranged to meet and hang out on a Friday evening that week. However, when Friday night came and I phoned her apartment I was told the first time that she was in the shower, and the other times I just got the answering machine.

Understandably I was disappointed; I really wanted to see her. But not willing to give up so easily, my friend and I decided to drive around looking for her. In the end we found ourselves wandering into the Ivanhoe Pub. It is not the most savoury of institutions, but I knew it was a place that she could be found from time to time and so we thought we should at least take a look.

Upon entering we suddenly found ourselves very out of place. My Trinity sweater and my friend’s ponytail did not help us much there. The light glowed dimly through the smoke from the lamps suspended by chains from the ceiling. In the corner of the bar there was a strobe light and some music from the 70s and 80s playing, to which several couples where dancing drunkenly.

Couples were clustered along the fringes with constellations of empty glasses around them. There was a heavy weight of despair in the air that seemed somehow associated with the old orange carpet that blanketed the floor.